Daniel TepferStaff writer

Updated 2:46 pm, Friday, May 20, 2011

A polce car is parked near the scene of an FBI investigation on Riverview Drive in Bridgeport, Conn. on Friday, May 20, 2011. A city man was arrested Thursday after police say he sold eight home-made pipe bombs to undercover officers.
Photo: Daniel Tepfer, Daniel Tepfer

A polce car is parked near the scene of an FBI investigation on Riverview Drive in Bridgeport, Conn. on Friday, May 20, 2011. A city man was arrested Thursday after police say he sold eight home-made pipe bombs to undercover officers.
Photo: Daniel Tepfer

BRIDGEPORT -- More than a dozen police and FBI agents converged on a small North End condominium complex as word spread about a State Trooper being injured by an explosive device there.

"The paper said the end of the world was coming but this is a little soon," said Gary D'Andrea as police blocked off the entrance to the Riverview condominiums off Vincellette Street.

"It's scary, I heard there was a bomb and then all the police cars, I don't know what's happening," said a woman resident of the complex, who didn't want to be identified.

Police sources said it was a joint, FBI, State Police and New York City police investigation connected to the arrest Thursday of a man who allegedly sold pipe bombs to undercover officers from his white Subaru in Co-Op City in the Bronx.

The sources said the alleged bomb-seller may have been making the bombs in the apartment where he lived with his girlfriend and their baby in the condo complex. WTNH and the New York Daily News identified the alleged bomb-seller as Nicholas Lihnier, 37.

"The FBI was serving a search warrant and it is an FBI operation," Viadero said.

Fire officials said they were called to the scene about 3 a.m. for a possible explosion, but when they got there they said FBI agents told them they weren't needed so they left.

State police confirmed a trooper was injured during the search of the condo but didn't immediately provide any more information. State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance was treated and released from St. Vincent's Medical Center.

Riverview is a small dead-end street of 70 two-story wood-sided units off Vincellette Street in the city's North End.

Ed Donahue, a resident of the condo complex, said Thursday afternoon he noticed a number of unmarked police-style cars parked across the street in the Stop &Shop parking lot.

"I think it was about 4 o'clock, but don't hold me to that," he said. "There were cars with New York license plates and ones with Connecticut plates and then they all drove in here blocking the roadway. Then all these guys got out of the cars and went into this one unit at the end and they have been there all night."

Residents said they heard no explosion. Many said they knew little about the couple who lived in the unit being searched by police.

"They seemed nice," said a female resident who asked not to be identified. "I saw the girlfriend in Stop & Shop earlier this week and she said they were moving to Florida soon. They had only been here a few months."

Another woman who also asked not to be identified said she thought the suspect and his girlfriend were "phonies."

Authorities said the man was acting on his own and not linked to any kind of organization, WABC-TV in New York reported.